As the demand for consumer electronic products increases, LCD manufacturing plants continuously expand throughput to satisfy the market demand. However, as the service lives of products are about to expire, more and more waste LCDs are generated. Currently, the number of waste LCDs in Taiwan has reached thousands of tons/year, and the number is expected to increase by year. The glass component of an LCD panel is alkaline metal oxide-free aluminosilicate glass melt (RO—Al2O3—SiO2, wherein RO represents an alkaline earth metal compound, such as BaO, CaO, MgO and SrO). The material is composed of a single component, inert to a chemical reaction, and thermotolerant. Further, the material has characteristics like a high glass transition temperature, a high melting temperature, and a high level of hardness. As such, unlike common soda-lime glass, waste LCD panel glass cannot be processed for further use by a fabrication equipment. Currently, most of the waste LCD panel glass is landfilled. However, the recycle of the waste LCD panel glass has become an important issue of environmental protection.
As the throughput expands, a large amount of industrial wastewater, e.g., arsenic commonly used in semiconductor fabrication and heavy metal components (e.g., lead, copper, chromium, cadmium, nickel and zinc) commonly found in wastewater from an electroplating plant is produced in each industrial process. The industrial wastewater is mainly subjected to conventional chemical precipitation. The wastewater treatment is not only high in cost, but fails to appropriately treat chemical sludge. As such, secondary contamination may even occur. Another common approach is to use zeolite for a wastewater treatment. However, zeolite cannot be directly applied in the treatment of strongly acidic wastewater, because it disintegrates or loses adsorbability in a strong acid.
Accordingly, it is an urgent issue to develop a more convenient and efficient treatment method for resolving the contamination of a heavy metal in water. The objective of the present disclosure is how to resolve the issue of a large amount of waste LCD panel glass to reduce environmental burden, while providing a more beneficial way of reusing the waste LCD panel glass to create a sustainable value for the material.